In January 2013 IAM reported on a research group hosted by the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute resurrecting Marxism. The group looked at the world through Marxist prism even when their conclusions detached from reality. In particular, Marxists ignore radical Islam, as Marx viewed religion as a form of false consciousness. At a time of sea-change in the Middle East that needs research and explanations, Van Leer and the Dutch Foundation behind it sponsor the lambasting of Israel never to mention the Islamist agenda in the region.
The staff of Van Leer belongs to the political left. In February 2016 IAM reported on a Van Leer senior fellow who called for the boycott of products from the settlements and contacted various countries to encourage them to do the same. Also, Shai Lavi, the new director, a professor in the faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University, the director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, has been a supporter of army refusal, opposed the government Prawer plan for settling the Bedouins, and petitioned in support of Breaking the Silence demanding it "deserves great respect and appreciation for its courageous struggle for the public, for human rights - for every human being - and for allowing a chance for peace." Recently Newsweek, reported on a research conducted by Shira Havkin of Van Leer, on how Israel has gone through privatization and privatized security in the West Bank. The article neglected to mention that Havkin is an activist with the group Machsom Watch since the 1990s.
This coming June, Van leer will host a conference looking at "the concept of progress as particularly relevant for examining Islamic modernist movements (Nahda) who thought to “join” a universal paradigm of progress, compared to other modes of political Islam who at times question the whole idea of
progress and at other times place emphasis on alternative visions of progress." It will also look at how "the Zionist project was imbued from the start with colonial language, which deployed a discourse of progress." The papers to be submitted could include thinkers like Hegel, Franz Fanon and Muhammad Abdu. Not surprising, one follower of such thinkers intended to lead devout Muslims to "spirituality of liberation" promising to "attempt to decolonize our hearts and minds," and hoping also to include text by "the Muslim International which has been grossly under-studied" in order to discuss "the role Western epistemology has played in colonizing the heart, mind and spirit."
Similarly, this type of discourse was previewed recently in May in the conference "The Occupation at 50: Pasts, Presents, Futures" by Sussex University, organised by Amir Paz-Fuchs, a co-academic director of the privatization project at Van Leer. The invitation to the conference reads,
2017 marks 50 years for the longest standing military occupation in the world. During that time, the political, demographic, legal, economic and social dimensions of the occupation have changed dramatically – in Israel, in the West Bank and Gaza, in the region, and beyond. The two-state solution has moved from being perceived as a threat to Israel’s existence, to the only possible solution, to one that is now slowly fading into the realms of an unrealistic prospect. The West Bank and Gaza, once viewed as indivisible, have taken different trajectories. Resistance has taken the form of violent uprising, civic protests and international collaboration. The legal system has been portrayed by some as the final frontier for the protection of Palestinian rights, but is seen by others as one of the main facilitators of the occupation. The terms of economic engagement have changed dramatically, from the incorporation of Palestinian labour and markets into the Israeli economy, to selective disengagement during times of upheaval, to complete removal of non-citizen Palestinians from the Israeli labour market, and to calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. And the international community has moved from bewilderment, to active engagement, to frustration and, perhaps, to apathy.
This conference intended "to take stock and shed light on these issues, by reflecting on the pasts, presents and futures of the occupation; on its implications not just for Palestinians but also for Israelis, and worldwide; on the multiple connections between Israel’s occupation and developments elsewhere in the world; and on the distinctiveness of the occupation in global and historical context." Yoni Mendel, also of the Van Leer is the chair of the panel "1948, 1967 and the Occupation". This panel discusses how, "Israel’s independence in 1948 was simultaneously the Palestinian Nakba" potentially making Israeli Arabs "stand in the way of a permanent two-state solution." Such a statement suggests to promote a one-state solution. Speakers include George Bisharat's "Law and the Continuing Nakba," for example. A perusal of the list of speakers indicates that this is not a scholarly discussion but rather a political one.
There is an explanation to why this is happening, Van Leer was established in Jerusalem in 1957 by the Van Leer family. "The Institute was designed to serve as a center of intellectual excellence and advanced learning - serving science, ethics and society." The problem lies when Van Leer claims that "Alongside its commitment to academic excellence, the Institute and its resident community of scholars seek to play an active role in civic life in Israeli democracy and its immediate hinterland. To that end the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute has set up Centers for the promotion and innovation in the field of Tolerance Education, the Center for the Study of Arab Society and the Mediterranean Forum. The Institute's projects and personnel are placed in nearly 200 secondary schools throughout Israel, where they implement innovative educational projects. Because of its intellectual prominence and political independence, the Institute functions as a sort of "national town-hall" where Israel's ethical and political agendas are often shaped. The main auditorium which, with Polly Van Leer's insight, was built for this purpose, draws Israel's intellectual and cultural elites for public deliberation and political discourse."
The mixing of academics and activism by Van Leer is just one more example of how anti-Israel activists have derived their legitimacy.

Just as an older generation of academics-activists is retiring or moving on, a cadre of their students is supplanting in the Israeli academy. Like their mentors, the younger generation is dedicated to pursuing the binational state project and, more to the point, using their tax-payers supported positions to do that.
Ruthie Ginsburg, a visual culture researcher from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design is a case in point. She did her doctoral dissertation under Ariella Azoulay at Bar-Ilan University at the Program for Hermeneutics and Cultural Studies. As IAM reported, Azoulay subsequently moved to lead the Photo-lexic international research group in the Minerva Humanities Center of Tel Aviv University, part of the Political Lexicon Project directed by Adi Ophir.
Ophir described the project in the following way: "The Lexicon group studies foundational concepts in political theory and initiates the writing of original essays in the field... Through the critical interpretation and redefinition of these concepts the group seeks to broaden the horizons of the theoretical thought and at the same time to shed light on present political conditions." Though sounding general in scope, the project was essentially a compilations of essays bashing Israel. Azoulay used an obscure approach known as critical photography to produce images equating the treatment of Palestinians to the fate of Jews during the Holocaust. Most notoriously, Azoulay added a caption to an image of a chain-link fence and some Palestinians stating "In this act, too, Palestinians are the ones who will be arrested. This time, however, they force the Israeli soldiers to chase them as if they were chasing (Jewish) prisoners under the Nazi regime."
Ginsburg, as her Bezalel web page indicates, is teaching photography, visual culture and gender at the History and Theory Department, as well as at Tel-Aviv University and Ben-Gurion University. Ginsburg is more than ready to follow in the footsteps of Azoulay. She is now leading the Photo-Lexic research group at Minerva of Humanities Center, Tel-Aviv University. Her most recent book is And You Will Serve as Eyes for Us − Israeli Human Rights Organizations as Seen Through the Camera’s Eye (Hebrew).
The articles by Ginsburg are to be found in journals and books on Visual Culture and Human Rights: "Framing, Misframing and Reframing"; "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who’s the Fairest Soldier of them All?"; "Taking Pictures Over Soldiers' Shoulders: Reporting on Human Rights Abuse from the Israeli Occupied Territories".
As IAM repeatedly stated, scholars have the right to engage in political activism. What is wrong, however, is the fact that activism became so seamlessly combined with an academic position. Ginsburg seems to take this for granted. For example, in the article “Taking Pictures over Soldiers' Shoulders: Reporting on Human Rights Abuse from the Israeli Occupied Territories”, she writes that her goal is to “dismantle the uniform understanding that the photographs… as nothing more than objective evidence…” She adds that the critical approach enables her to "represent a certain “reality” and also a viewpoint that is chosen over others.”
This use of critical jargon should not deceive the readers. Ginsburg is not interested in using photography to represent objective evidence, because her point of view “chosen over others” is to present the Israeli soldiers in a most incriminating way. By adopting critical photography, Ginsburg can contribute to her political agenda of human rights for Palestinians. As she put it, “human rights language has created the foundation for “an advocacy revolution” and has done so by providing the abused and oppressed with the tools to pressure from within and beyond the borders of the nation-state.”
Once again, the long suffering tax-payer is forced to support this self-proclaimed “advocacy” revolutionary.

Hagar Kotef (Gender Studies, Bar Ilan University), a veteran activist whose rather modest academic output was essentially in line with her a radical political agenda. As IAM noted, for most of her career she was preoccupiedwith writing about Machsom Watch, a group that monitors border checkpoints.
After years of holding part-time positions, Kotef landed a tenure-track position at Bar Ilan’s Gender Studies. But her resolve to promote a political platform in the guise of academic work has not changed. Indeed, in an article co-authored with Merav Amir (an activist from Hebrew University, now at Queen's University, Belfast), Kotef analyzes the Anarchists against the Wall. Her explanation for the link between gender studies and Anarchists against the Wall is beyond ingenious. Kotef claims that the Anarchists are “queers”- a term used by gays and lesbians who do not accept traditional gender identities.
In the Israeli context, the queer community is identified with advanced pro-Palestinian positions.
IAM reported on Kvisa Shchora (Black Laundry), the original queer group of Aeyal Gross, now professor of law at Tel Aviv University. However, the Anarchists against the Wall have never identified themselves as a queer group and neither did Kobi Snitz, one of their leaders.
Beyond the question whether the Anarchists against the Wall are queer or not, there is a more serious problem. Kotef is part of a growing phenomenon of liberal arts scholars who use their positions to further a political agenda. The International Committee that evaluated the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University stated these academics tend to publish on marginal issues in non-mainstream outlets. The Committee recommended the Department hire mainstream scholars to avoid being closed down.
The Bar-Ilan Gender Studies Program should have considered this recommendation before hiring Kotef.

Zochrot is a far left-wing group dedicated to the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel. Supported by Belgian, Dutch, French, Swiss, Irish, and British relief agencies, it has drawn legitimacy from a number of radical scholars - Adi Ophir, Yehouda Shenhav, Ariella Azoulay (TAU) and Hannan Hever (HUJ).
Dr. Yair Auron, an expert in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the Open University, is the newest recruit to the cause. His lecture entitled "The Holocaust, the Resurrection and the Nakba" will be delivered during Holocaust Memorial Day at the Zochrot office in Tel Aviv.
This is hardly a coincidence as the Zochrot group has been relentlessly promoting the notion that the Holocaust and the Nakba are similar. Though Auron has denied that the Nakba is a form of genocide or ethnic cleansing, he is not above blaming Jews. In a book with a title that evoked Hannah Arendt, The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide, Auron accused Jews of participating in the Armenian Genocide and the State of Israel of not doing enough to support the efforts of Armenians to recognize the event. In chapter three of the book, he actually implies a certain equivalence among the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide and the Nakba.
As IAM has repeatedly demonstrated, in the topsy turvy world of critical scholarship on which Zochrot relies, definitions and empirical data do not matter. Zochrot uses this approach to "prove" that Israel has committed massive atrocities against the Palestinians on a scale ushered by the Holocaust. By consenting to appear in a Zochrot event, Auron is legitimizing this view.

IAM reported that professors at TAU's Department of Archaeology had worked with Emek Shaveh to limit the scope of excavations in the City of David. The following article illustrates another facet of Emek Shaveh's activity. Posted by Moshe Machover, one of the co-founders of Matzpen, it tells of a behind the scene pressure of Emek Shaveh activists to influence a report of the Guardian, a newspaper highly hostile to Israel, about a new Israeli exhibition. According to Machover, the Emek Shaveh activists object to the exhibition because, in the words of one of them, it would have "a major political effect on Israeli public opinion about Jewish heritage and will strengthen claims to the land".
In addition to Raphael (Rafi) Greenberg (TAU), one of the high profile faculty-activists in Emek Shaveh is Chaim Noy, a member of its Board of Directors. Noy, a senior lecturer in communications at Sapir College, has adopted a "critical perspective" to the analysis of "nationalistic messages" in Israeli communications and wrote against the City of David dig because it created the illusion of a Jewish past in Jerusalem.
In 2011, Emek Shaveh received NIS 211,946 from the Norwegian Embassy in Israel. The document, signed by Noy, stated that the grant was given to the group in order to carry out a "archaeological report in Jerusalem."
Norwegian patronage of Emek Shaveh is not surprising. In 2009, a coalition of radical leftist groups in Israel called upon the Norwegian people to divest from companies that have links to West Bank projects. As a result, Norway has become very active in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic sentiments have been high among Norwegians. A widely-quoted June 2012 survey indicated 12 percent of Norwegians hold 'strong anti-Jewish prejudices and that more than a third of the country’s population thinks the Israeli regime’s treatment of Palestinians is “analogous to Nazi actions against Jews.” Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store said that Hamas “represents a significant part of Palestinian society” and is “a social, political, religious, and also a military reality that will not simply go away as a result of Western policies of isolation.”
Quite clearly, the support for Emek Shaveh is in line with the Norwegian foreign policy, a fact that Noy and his colleagues are probably aware of. Still, it raises ethical questions about their willingness to receive grants from a country that is in the forefront of the international BDS movement and where a third of the population thinks that Israel is a reincarnation of Nazi Germany.

Dr. Kobi Snitz, a leader in Anarchists Against the Wall movement and a researcher at the (Weizmann Institute of Science, has been collaborating with some of the most virulent critics of Israel. His latest venture includes a guided tour for Alan Gilbert and members of the Interfaith-Dialogue - The Dorothy Cotton Institute, a African-American civil rights group. Activists associated with these groups have been in the forefront of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Gilbert, a professor at the University of Denver is a veteran activist who urged to put Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State in the Bush Administration, on trial for war crimes. In 2007 the Interfaith -Dialogue traveled to Tehran to drum up support for lifting sanctions against Iran. Most recently, Gilbert has worked on the undermining the anti-Iran sanctions with Trita Parsi, the president of the National Iranian American Council, a Tehran lobby group in the United States.
As the article below indicates, Gilbert has furnished a most egregious misrepresentation of the reality on the ground. IAM reported that there is a certain pattern to these misrepresentations; they feed into what the European Union Monitoring Center defined as "nazification of Israel."
As a private citizen, Snitz has the right to engage in this type of political speech and action. But as an academic, he is expected to know that there was no Kristallnacht against Eritreans in Tel Aviv. For that matter, so should Alan Glibert.
Using academic legitimacy to propagate exaggerations and lies is wrong. Academic freedom comes with the correlative duty of elevating the public discourse in a democracy by providing a constructive critique rather than a demagogic, smear piece.

Kobi Snitz (Weizmann Institute) is a leading activist with Anarchists Against the Wall, which has a full complement of activists at home and abroad. On a recent trip to London, Snitz gave an interview full of misinformation and deception with regard to Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. He broadened his repertoire to include the recent disturbances against illegal African migrants, without mentioning the rash of rapes and other crimes in Tel Aviv that had triggered the event. To hear Snitz tell it, Israel is a racist society whose citizens randomly attack black people in the street.
Like some other highly activist faculty, Snitz can afford his extensive political work: he is a member of the Institute's Department of Neurobiology; yet, since obtaining a doctorate almost a decade ago, he published some three articles. This is very skimpy record, especially as compared to other members of his research team.
Once again, the Israeli taxpayer is called to subsidize a political activist in the name of an expansive definition of academic freedom.

In 1972 Ehud (Udi) Adiv was convicted for spying for Syria, today he is supervising the course "Introduction to Political Thought" in Ramat Gan College, a branch of the Open University. The Students: He speaks in a leftist manner. The University: If a complaint is filed we shall investigate.
Students in the course Introduction to Political Thought" in the Open University protest against the supervisor - Dr. Udi Adiv, because of his past, that includes conviction for spying against the State of Israel
A student: "I studied in the course and had no knowledge of the background of the lecturer". After two classes when the lecturer's use of wording sounded not quite right, I asked another student in my class who the lecturer was. I felt he was speaking in a leftist manner. He mentioned expressions like "occupation". After that I googled him and found out who he was.
Unfortunately he is the only one teaching this course, a compulsary in my field of study, International Relations and in other fields, which is why I requested to discontinue the the course. I sent a letter to the university and I was reimbursed. However, I still need to study this course because it is compulsary, but no way, I am not going to study in his class.
"Adiv uses the platform he is given in order to put across his political views and t my mind this is not logical. I wrote about this to the president of the University but did not get her response".
The Open University will investigate.

Dr. Kobi Snitz's hatred to Israel raises a serious question, whether he is suitable for employment in Israel's most lucrative science institution. The petition he signed reads:
Israel's attack on a humanitarian aid fleet on Monday 31 May 2010, its murder of 9 human rights activists in international waters, and wounding many more, demonstrate that Israel rejects the structural tenets of our shared humanity, manifested in a global moral consensus and international law.
Israel was established on the ruins of another country, Palestine. In 1948 more than half the population of Palestine were uprooted from their cities and villages, 400 of which were completely destroyed. The state of Israel has never allowed Palestinian refugees to return and today their number has reached 7 million, many of whom are still stateless, living in refugee camps in Palestine and other Arab countries
Since its establishment the state of Israel has consistently violated international law. To date, it has defied 246 UN Security Council Resolutions. As a direct consequence, seven million Palestinians are excluded from the right to live on land internationally acknowledged to be theirs; and increasingly, they are being excluded from their right to any future at all as a nation. The 4 million Palestinians in the occupied territories have endured over 40 years of brutal occupation and denied even the most basic Human rights. The 1.4 million who remain in Israel are second class citizens.

Professor Galia Golan, A Pioneer of Academic Activism Responds to the CHE.
According to the leaked copy of report of the Council for Higher Education, Galia Golan (IDC) a former professor at the Hebrew University, is a member of the international committee that issued a highly negative evaluation of the Department of Politics and Government at BGU. She wrote a dissenting opinion, stating "I fail to see the connection" between the report's linkage of political activism to the poor academic standards in the department. Golan's self-admitted failure to see the connection is not surprising as she practically wrote the book on political activism in the academia.
Golan was an expert on Soviet Union at the Hebrew University when she co-founded Peace Now, serving as its unofficial spokesperson; she later joined the leadership of the leftist Meretz Party. With no background in the Middle East, Golan used her academic credentials to become an "expert" on the Arab-Israeli conflict

I recently sat down with Kobi Snitz, a member of Boycott From Within and a prominent activist with Anarchists Against the Wall, after an anti-settlement demonstration in the West Bank village of Beit Ommar. We discussed the boycott law, what it means for the internal Israeli BDS movement, the potential Israeli High Court response and more.
AK: But Boycott From Within hasn’t taken down their website.
KS: No, we haven’t. We keep going the same as we have before. We issued a statement saying we resist the law, and we will continue. Our response is less visible—we’re not exactly an Israeli group in the sense that we work inside Israel or that our main objective is to influence Israeli opinion. So, unlike Gush Shalom, unlike Peace Now—they are an Israeli group in the sense that they try to influence the Israeli public—I don’t think Boycott From Within does that. The internal response is less relevant.

Dr. Kassem received her Ph.D. from Ben Gurion University and now teaches at Achva College and Sakhnin College.
Kassem’s efforts to force her interviewees’ recollections to fit her ideological framework are even more egregious. For instance, she admits that out of the thirty-seven women that she interviewed, only three used the term Nakba and all three of them were affiliated with the Communist Party; yet the term Nakba is constant throughout the book (p. 92). Kassem views these elderly women from Lyd and Ramleh to be refugees, but her interviewees never used this term to describe themselves (p. 61). When the women refer to migration and infiltration, she protests: “unlike the interviewees, I do not use the word migration to describe the Palestinian expulsion from their cities, villages and land in 1948; nor do I use the word infiltrator to refer to those Palestinians who tried to return homes” (p. 61). Indeed, Kassem tries so hard to make the women “politically correct,” that the narrative sounds at times like as discussion in a critical studies graduate seminar.

we have always opposed Western imperialism which tries to join forces with Arab reactionism in order to advance its own interests.
As members of the left, we refuse to choose between two alternatives that the agents of world capitalism pose - support for reactionary local regimes or external imperialist control - and we point to the real alternative: setting the nations free from any subjugation, by themselves and for themselves.

"Aid we’ve provided"
Al Araqib, February 2011
On February 10 2011, residents of the unrecognized Bedouin village of Al Araqib gathered with Israeli activists to protest itsdestruction, for the 15th time, by Jewish National Fund bulldozers. Police violently dispersed the peaceful demonstration, making arresting three activists. The Beersheeba Magistrate accepted the prosecution’s demand that the detainees be released [...]
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Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem, March 2011
On Friday, March 4 2011, activist Sara Benninga, just back from the US where she received J Street’s Giving Voice to our Values award, returned to lead another of the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement’s non-violent protests against evictions of Palestinian families. For the first time, they were met by a special Border [...]
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a-Nabi Salih, February 2011
The unarmed protest movement in the tiny village of a-Nabi Salih against the settler expropriation of ancestral land and the community’s only spring has long been a target for suppression by the IDF. After realizing that lethal violence did not deter the community, focus shifted to incarceration of its leadership. Some 13 percent [...]
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First they came for the boycotters, but I loved my Ahava lotion, so I did not speak out
Then they came for the human rights organizations, but I was busy planning my vacation, so I did not speak out
Then they came for the parents who did not want their babies to have to sing Hatikva every Sunday morning, but I was busy buying my grandson a new toy car, so I did not speak out
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out

From: Kobi Snitz
To: againstwall againstwall
Sent: Thursday, 7 July 2011, 10:59
Subject: [againstwall] Saturday demo From Bil'lin to Qalandiya
Hi all,
this action will take place whether or not the large number of internationals manage to get in on friday. Please let me know if you can come.
Invitation
Action in July 9th
Ramallah’s groups from “Welcome to Palestine” and Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall, the Settlements and the Occupation invite you to take part in an action which will celebrate the 7th anniversary of International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) advice which had considered that the Israelian Wall of Apartheid is against international law because it violates Palestinian rights. ICJ also had established Israel’s obligation to stop building and to remove the wall, as well as to make reparations to the people affected by construction of the wall.
Where: Bil’in

Conference on Nonviolence - ISRAEL-PALESTINE - The Means that Justifies the End. THURSDAY, July 7th
Dr Saeb Erekat - member of the PLO Executive Committee and Chief Palestinian Negotiator
The Palestinian National Authority’s strategy for the UN General Assembly annual meeting in September and for the recognition of Palestine as a state
Abir Kopti - Palestinian social, feminist and political activist, former member of the Nazareth’s city council
Effective nonviolent struggle in the case of Egypt
Kobi Snitz - Israeli activist from Anarchists Against the Wall
The joint struggle against the fence and nonviolent strategies to end the occupation

The conceptualization of Ashkenazim as being at the heart of the collective while Mizrahim remain outside suggests that there is no separation in Israel between nationality and ethnicity.
Rather, Ashkenaziness, at least in its hegemonic version, spills over into nationality and defines it. This is precisely the reason why the ethnic discourse remains hidden, and the 'groupness' of
Ashkenazim is meant to stay concealed. Thus the discourse of Ashkenazim often establishes social boundaries, thereby creating a separate ethnic category of Ashkenazim; but since the latter is seen as illegitimate, it must quickly be erased. Accordingly, Ashkenaziness is seen as a hegemonic, desirable category and, at the same time, a non-legitimate one. It is this dual understanding of Ashkenaziness that maintains the privileged status of Ashkenazi whiteness in
the Israeli context.

Hannah Safran and Ola Shtiwi
April 26, 7-9 p.m.
The Community Church
40 E. 35th Street (between Madison and Park Avenues)
Women have been the backbone of much of the political resistance in the Middle East. Women have led the struggle for a just peace in Israel/Palestine. This event will bring the voices, experiences, activism and perspectives of women so often absent from the U.S. public discourse on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
Hannah Safran is a long-time feminist and peace activist who combines grass-root activism with academic research. Her book on the history of the Jewish suffrage movement in 1920's and the feminist movement in Israel in the 1970's was published in 2006. She teaches women’s studies at Emek-Yisreel College and at the extension of Leslie University in Israel. She is a member of Isha L'Isha the Haifa Feminist Center and has been active at Women in Black the Coalition of Women for Peace.

On April 2, 2011, Weizmann Institute’s Kobi Snitz wrote a letter in request for funding of activities (see below), where he claimed that Anarchists Against the Wall founding member Yonatan Pollak has served a three-month prison sentence for riding a bicycle in Tel Aviv.
However, according to the Jerusalem Post, Yonatan Pollak was given a NIS 1,500 fine for partaking in an illegal assembly that was protesting the Gaza siege in January 2008 on bicycles. It was not like Pollak was convicted for leisurely riding a bicycle, as Snitz falsely implied.
It is important to note that Snitz has spread similar lies about his own prison sentence. Snitz has claimed that he was ordered to serve 20 days in prison because he interfered with a military order to demolish a Palestinian home in the village of Kharbatha, which is located West of Ramallah. However, in reality, Snitz was given the sentence of paying a small sum of NIS 2,000 fine, not too much for a mathematician at the Weizmann Institute, yet Snitz decided to refuse to pay his fine and thus was ordered to spend 20 days in prison.
Just like Pollak, Snitz chose serving time in prison!

In discussing the ideological conflict-supporting beliefs, which reflect the ethos of conflict, we will focus mainly on those beliefs that are found to be central in fostering the disagreement and preventing peacemaking. These beliefs include themes that pertain to the goals of the conflict and their justification,
de-legitimization of the Arabs in general, and of the Palestinians in particular, a sense of collective victimhood, collective self-presentation, and a theme that describes the essence of peace...
There is no doubt that the prevailing view that the West Bank is not occupied serves as a major barrier to conflict resolution. The perception of the majority of Jews in Israel and a significant segment of the political system – namely that the West Bank belongs exclusively to the Jewish people and is now liberated – leads to rejection of the notion of compromise on this land, to difficulties in leaving this territory, and to the feeling that the Jewish people are the only side that contributes
tangibly to the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (see Magal, Bar-Tal, Oren and Halperin, in preparation, for extensive elaboration of this point).
In addition, public opinion polls indicate strong opposition to any attempt to recognize or teach the Palestinian narrative. For example, in a 2009 poll, a majority of the Jewish public (56%) opposed Israel taking even partial responsibility for
the suffering caused to the Palestinians by the 1948 war, including, for example, the creation of the refugee problem, even if the Palestinians were to officially accept part of the responsibility for the 1948 events

We, academics from a variety of disciplines and from all the institutions of higher learning in Israel, hereby publicly express our opposition to the continuation of the occupation and the establishment of settlements in the occpied territories....
Therefore, we declare our refusal to participate in any academic activity, of any sort, that takes place in the college operating in the settlement Ariel.
Ariel was established on occupied land. A few kilometers from flourishing Ariel, Palestinians live in hardship in villages and refugee camps, deprived of basic of human rights and life of dignity.

Abu Freih appealed to the Palestinian masses to support the owners of the destroyed homes in Araqib, describing the repeated demolition of the village as a reflection of "blind hatred".
The villagers are adamant on remaining in their village and would not be deterred by Israeli bulldozers, he said, charging that the Israeli authorities wanted to pave the way before construction of Jewish farms on the land of the village.

He was not the only anarchist the Jewish department dealt with that week. Five days earlier, Kobi Snitz was attending a conference when he received a call from an unidentified number. The caller told him, "Shalom, this is Rona from the Shin Bet. I'm sure you've heard about me."
"She said she wanted to invite me for a friendly conversation and for us to exchange thoughts," said Snitz, 39, an anarchist activist and a mathematician. He asked whether he was being called in for an interrogation and when she said no, he said, no thanks. In 2009, Snitz served a 20-day sentence over an attempt a few years earlier to prevent the demolition of a house in Kharbatha, a village west of Ramallah. Two months ago, he was given another five-day sentence over a protest against the Second Lebanon War in 2006.
"The Jewish department believes that every Arab is dangerous and that they can take us, the naive activists, for a ride," says Snitz. "They call us in in order to create a psychological profile, to know which of us they can exploit, and who can be exploited by others. They are not looking for information."

The last day of the year - The last day of the Wall
Mass demonstration in Bilin, 31.12.2010
Nearly six years after they started to protest and more than three years after the Israeli Supreme Court decision which ordered the army to move the wall, the people of Bil'in have waited long enough. The village's popular committee is therefore calling for the last day of the year to be the last day of the wall. Join them on the 31st of December to topple Israeli apartheid and its walls.
People from all over the west bank will converge on the village of Bilin on Dec 31. The village is also calling on all supporters from Israel and from abroad who have been with them over the years to join them on this historic day. As has been the case in Bil'in over the last six years, Palestinians, Internationals and Israelis will combine their efforts in a joint struggle for liberation and justice

nitz, who is considered to be the first Israeli to be arrested and convicted in the occupied territories, says he admires the Palestinians who endure arrest, imprisonment and often torture without the privilege of judicial restraint exercised for Israelis like him. But beyond being an act of solidarity and redemption, arrest is part of Snitz’s reason for staying in Israel.
“The strongest reason for being here is the struggle,” he explains. “I could live comfortably somewhere else. The state is mostly an enemy, though I don’t want to say the same about Israeli society.”

After the Flotilla incident, Dr. Chaitin put the blame on the IDF and not the Flotilla participants for the violence that ensued. In 2009, she signed onto a petition against Israeli soldiers. That same year, Dr. Chaitin also protested against the Kibbutz Movement’s initiative to increase the siege on Gaza. During the Gaza War, she an op-ed in the Washington Post protesting Israel's right to defend herself.
International Conference at Sapir College:
Gaza – Sderot
Moving from Crisis to Sustainability
February 14 - 17, 2011
The Gaza-Sderot region has known violence, war, and tensions for the past 10 years.
This region has known Israeli military incursions and a blockade on the Gaza Strip, rocket attacks from Gaza on civilian populations in Sderot and the ever-expanding surrounding
Gaza region, economic and humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, underemployment and unemployment, damage to physical and psychological health, insecurity for all peoples of the region.
Following "Cast Lead" Operation/War and the Gaza Flotilla, the crisis in the region has drawn international attention

Dr Manna, a senior research fellow at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, believes the government introduced the legislation at this juncture because Israeli negotiators are demanding that the Palestinian leadership recognise Israel as a Jewish state. Now, they are making similar demands from Israeli Arabs.
“It’s absurd. The message is that even though the state is not loyal to you and makes you a second-class citizen, you must swear allegiance,” Dr Manna said. “It’s like asking blacks in South Africa to swear allegiance to the apartheid regime.”

Colleagues say remarks against occupation kept Ariella Azoulay, who teaches visual culture and contemporary philosophy, from promotion.
Bar-Ilan University's appointments committee decided recently not to grant tenure or promote a lecturer, reportedly because of her
political leanings.

Mada al-Carmel invites you to participate in a seminar:
Discussing the Book: “The Time of the Green Line”, by Professor Yehuda Shenhav Wednesday, July 28th, 5:30 pm Mada al-Carmel
51 Allenby, Haifa. Participants: Introduction: Professor Nadim Rouhana, Director; Mada al-Carmel. Speaker: Hassan Jabareen, Lawyer, Director; Adalah. Speaker: Antoine Shalhat, Writer, Political Analyst. Commentary: Professor Yehuda Shenhav, Lecturer, Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology; Tel Aviv University. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian : Acts such as going to school and wearing the hijab (veil) become acts of resistance for women. In fact, wearing the hijab becomes a way of not just declaring an opposition to the occupation, but also clearly defining one’s presence within a militarized and masculinized space. Women’s bodies are, thus, true battlegrounds and sites of resistance as women employ not only the hijab, but also traditional embroidery on clothing and the practice of religion as forces of resistance. Interestingly and with compelling evidence, Shalhoub-Kevorkian points out that international human rights discourse has done very little for Palestinian women in the context of occupation...For example, the threat of rape for Palestinian women may be perceived as exaggerated by some but, given the history of the use of rape or the threat of rape to disperse villages during the Nakba (catastrophe) in 1948, it becomes clear that such fears are reasonable.

Kobi Snitz, a member of the 'Anarchists Against the Wall' group which goes every Friday to show support with the Palestinans in their struggle against israel, is detained again after participating in an anti-Israel rally. The first item is taken from Palestine Ma'an News. The second item is about Snitz, a protagonist in the film 'Budrus.'

AN URGENT BIBLICAL MESSAGE FOR THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT: “BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS, FOR THEY SHALL BE CALLED THE CHILDREN OF GOD”
The defiant press release describes the work of TENAC’s Israeli webmaster, Kobi Snitz, who runs the site from Israel and has apparently been “shot at, fined, jailed, and constantly harassed” for his peace activism. “TENAC is outraged at these actions,” it reads. “We strongly support his efforts to secure peace there. We also support the outstanding work of the North American Rabbis for Peace in Israel, who are engaged in the same hard, dangerous work.”

Two weeks ago I participated in an event saluting the technological achievements of the State of Israel held at the Boston Museum of Science, organized by that city's Israeli consulate and Jewish community. Included in the event was an exhibition showcasing Israel's technological achievements, particularly in the fields of communication and medical equipment, and lecturers paid tribute to the wonders of Israeli technology that have placed it at the forefront internationally in this field.
As president of the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, I spoke of the tremendous contribution the institution and its graduates have made to the technological flourishing of the State of Israel. Despite a bit of heckling during some speeches, the hundreds of participants responded to the event with loud applause and it was extremely successful.
It was only the next day, as I continued on my way, did I start receiving telephone messages about a letter that had been sent to the Boston Science Museum prior to the event, at the initiative of Prof. Noam Chomsky from MIT, faculty members from two Israeli universities and other individuals. In this letter, Chomsky and his colleagues expressed a sharply worded protest against the fact that the museum was allowing the president of the Technion - "the university that prepares weapons of murder" - to deliver a lecture there.

1) Watch Dr. Kobi Snitz intervied on a Palestinian video. The Palestinian demonstrators chant
"With our souls and blood we will redeem you oh al-Aqsa"
and Snitz thinks its all about popular activism for democracy and peace.
2) Palestinians Blocked Israeli Bulldozers ... After roughly three hours, Military and Border Police forces managed to repel the demonstrators, arresting two – a Palestinian and an Israeli. During the violent arrest, Israeli protester Kobi Snitz's shoulder was dislocated by the Border Police officers. He is currently held at the Moria police station in Jerusalem, where he is denied access to medical treatment.

Art, Visual Culture and the Israeli Occupation
This text was written as an introduction to a one-day conference held at Manchester Metropolitan University in May 2008. The conference was entitled ‘Art, Visual Culture and the Israeli Occupation’ and accompanied the exhibition ‘Desert Generation’ that was currently on display in the Holden Gallery in the Faculty of Art and Design. The text discusses issues of visuality and visibility related to the Israeli occupation and the possible role of visual artists in relation to these issues. It

The sensational espionage story of Udi Adiv – first grandson of the Gan Shmuel Kibbutz and paratrooper from among the Western Wall liberators during the Six-Day War, who was accused of spying for Syria – was one of the most exciting events in Israel during the early 70s.
During the 1950s, a friend of the Adiv family, Uri Ilan, emerged from the same kibbutz (Gan Shmuel). He was one of the heroic figures of the Israeli myth surrounding the issue of spying in Syria. He was caught and tortured and when his body was returned to Israel, a note bearing the mythological sentence “I was not a traitor” was found between his toes.
Udi Adiv and the other members of the Jewish-Arab network headed by Daud Turki (Udi Adiv’s instigator) and an Israeli Arab resident of Haifa’s Wadi Nisnas were accused of secretly traveling to Damascus to plan a Marxist revolution in Israel under the auspices of Syria.
The network members’ trial was the most widely discussed event in the State of Israel in those days. For the first time, an Israeli court of law allowed television cameras into the courthouse. Some claim that from this moment on, the image of the kibbutzim began to deteriorate in the eyes of the Israeli public. Udi Adiv and Daud Turki were sentenced to 17 years of imprisonment. Daud Turki was released 12.5 years later during the famous Jibril deal and Udi Adiv was released by the prison service release committee further to a public campaign to reduce his sentence.

Some 30 Israelis and 15 internationals celebrated Xmas (and the 42nd anniversary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) in Bilin today. They joined the weekly local demonstrations against the wall with St. Nick and Mrs. Claus (how come she hasn't got her own name?) costumes and toys for the kids. The soldiers were offered a Xmas tree decorated with used gas canister baubles, and reciprocated with brand new gas canisters for the demonstrators and village youth. But since collecting and displaying used army projectiles is grounds for arrest and indictment (as shown by the case of Abdullah Abu Rahme), the good boys of the local shabab politely returned the army's spent ammo. High level Fatah officials joined to congratulate and show solidarity. The demonstration ended with no casualties, and most Israelis continued to Sheikh Jarah.

Yet the ancient religion is not entirely lost. Its echoes are to be found in the songs and rituals of Jewitches and Hebrew pagans, a small movement of creative deviants who dodge the false choice between a ridiculously unfathomable God and a life barren of spirit. An older, gentler faith still lies dormant beneath the concrete blocks and bloodied soil of this orphaned land, await¬ing perhaps the day when the children of Ashera lay down their swords forever and seek reconnection to their deepest roots.

Since the foundation of the State of Israel it has entered into a process of confiscation of land from its indigenous inhabitants: the Arab residents of the country. Before 1948 the Bedouin occupied 99% of the Negev lands. The majority of the Bedouins fled/ were banished during the war, and the remaining 11,000 swore allegiance to the State, while the State in return promised to allow them to maintain their traditional way of life and their lands. However, less than a decade later, the government relocated and concentrated the Bedouin into a reservation, named the Siyag, which was only about 10% of the Negev. Most of the lands outside the Siyag were officially confiscated and most became land for the new Jewish agricultural settlements.
A partial process of registering land claims in the northern Negev was instigated by the Government of Israel in 1969, only to be hastily stopped in 1971. During this short and partial process members of the Bedouin community had registered only 8% of the Negev lands. These are the total land claims today of the Negev Bedouins (today they comprise 28% of the Negev residents while occupying only 3% of Negev lands). These land ownership claims since then are in a state of legal limbo – the process never completed. The land does not officially belong to the original Bedouin owners, nor to the government.
Now the Government of Israel is intensifying its attempts to take over these lands by planting trees.

Author of "Anarchy Alive: Anti-authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory" Uri Gordon recently did a speaking tour across the eastern states and eastern canada. On October 13th , AW@L hosted him at the KW Community Centre for Social Justice.
About the author: Anarchists Against the Wall is an Israeli action group supporting the popular Palestinian struggle against segregation and land confiscation in the West Bank. Uri Gordon, a participant in the group and author of the book "Anarchy Alive!", will discuss the group's activities and examine the achievements and limitations of the joint struggle, as well as anarchist perspectives on national liberation and the future of Palestine/Israel.

More significant, however, are this error’s implications on the judge’s assessment of the credibility of Prof. Ben-Naftali. An examination of the context of the passage quoted above makes it clear that Cullen J.’s purpose is to weaken Prof. Ben-Naftali’s credibility as a reliable expert and the weight of her evidence by erroneously finding that her testimony is plagued with terms that are “confusing” and “devoid of intrinsic substance.”
Further, as mentioned above, Cullen J. explicitly qualified Prof. Ben-Naftali as an expert in international humanitarian law. Accordingly, he deemed her to be an expert in a “confusing category of reference devoid of intrinsic substance,” of which “there is no such entity”—essentially, not much of a real expert in anything at all.

Amira Hass writes every week on "Internazionale" an italian weekly magazine that takes article from a lot of newspaper of the world and traslate it. This week she wrote:
Friday you will come to the demonstration of Bil'in against the wall? "asked my friend Anat, professor of philosophy just returned from a sabbatical period in France. We didn't meet for ten months. I apologized explaining: "I'm afraid." And it was true. Evidently I have finished my amount of courage. I can't anymore stand and face the soldiers who shoot (even if only tear gas and rubber bullets). Anat has tried to convince me: Ni'ilin, a nearby village, it's dangerous, but in Bil'in there are places to hide. The son of Anath (which made two years in jail for refusing to serve the army) is one of those Israelis participating actively in the fight against the occupation, togheter with Palestinian activists.
Recently one of them - Kobi Snitz, a professor of mathematics - told me another form of repression: night military raids every week against the two villages that continue to oppose the wall, arrests and show trials in front of the military court. I thought to work on it next week but I learned that I can't meet Kobi, since September 22 has been sentenced to twenty days' imprisonment. For several years it was under process for attempting in 2004 to prevent soldiers to demolish a house in the Palestinian village Kharbath.

Over 35 Israelis and 10 internationals joined local Palestinians for the weekly Friday demonstration against Israeli land theft and ongoing oppression in Bil'in.
The demonstration was relatively small and quiet, with the few kids who fight Occupation with stones keeping away from the non violent demonstrators and getting gassed.

Kobi Snitz, a long-time activist with the Israeli group Anarchists Against the Wall, and a personal friend of PSP, begins a 20 day prison term for an arrest in 2004 in which he tried to prevent a home demolition in the Palestinian village of Kharbatha, in the Ramallah District. He is the first Israeli activist to serve time for a demonstration in the Occupied Territories. His statement (from yesterday) is below:
Tomorrow I will start a 20 day prison term. It is a result of an attempt to prevent a house demolition in kharbatha. As you probably know 20 days is nothing compared to the time many Palestinian teenagers have to do. Unlike them, I did not have to do this. I refused to pay a fine and was therefore sent to jail.

Thanks Ilan - this is actually one event in a longer tour of the eastern US and Canada to promote my book "Anarchy Alive!". I will be talking about AAtW only in some of these events, but where I do I'll try to collect donations.
Here is the full schedule - if people have friends in any of these locations please invite them! All events start at 7pm. For updates please visit my website, www.anarchyalive.com
Uri

Moreover, the new legislation states that “representatives of the council will be subject to the
decisions of the government, as expressed in its decisions” (page 517). Thus, the government
would be able to carry out its plans to sell land and to Judaize the Galilee and the Negev in a
more efficient way when it controls the pace of sale and commercialization of the privatized
public space. Thus, the neo-liberal economic vision, which focuses on the privatization of
public resources, would converge with the completion of Palestinian disinheritance.

We write to you on behalf of “Boycott from within”– a group of Palestinians, Jews, citizens of Israel (boycottisrael.info) who for many years have been making every effort and trying every method in bringing an end to our own society's and our government's longstanding campaign against Palestinians. Our government’s campaign includes the killing of thousands and destruction of civil infrastructure resulting in widespread malnutrition and poverty.i We joined the Palestinian call for boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS) when other measures proved insufficient to compel our government to cease its colonial and apartheid policiesii. We know Israeli society well enough to know that it will not change unless it is compelled from the outside to do so. To ignore this Palestinian call is to be complicit in condemning Palestinians to further oppression, dispossession and suffering. Although at a vastly different scale, Israelis are also condemned to endless conflict by the actions of our government.

The Green Park construction company is engaged in building illegal settlements in the West Bank, notably, the settlements of Mattiyahu East and Modi'in Illit, which have been built on land annexed from the Palestinian village of Bil'in, by the Israeli apartheid wall...Last year Bil'in's village committee, with the help of Israeli human rights group Yesh Din began work on a case against two Canadian companies linked to Green Park...The Bil’in committee claims that Green Park International Inc. and Green Mount International Inc. have violated international law and Canadian domestic law and that the village has a right to protection under the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Both statutes prohibit an occupying power from transferring its civilian population into territory that it has occupied as a result of war. Bil’in also relies on the Canadian Geneva Conventions Act and the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, which contain the same prohibition. The acts have jurisdiction over Canadians regardless of where in the world the offence has taken place.

The theme of Itzhaki’s essay is her argument that, despite the revocation in 1991 of the censorship laws with respect to stage plays, a veil of self-censorship and the reluctance of mainstream audiences to confront unpleasant truths has obstructed the presentation in the Israeli theater of textual and visual representations of what she sees as the subjugation of the Palestinians under the “occupation.” “[W]e manage not to see the concrete images of the suffering, the pain. We know they are there, but we don’t care to watch it on stage.”
The security fence is the central metaphor--and villain--in her lament about the regrettable gap in the repertoire of the Israeli theater. The “wall we keep building between ourselves and the Palestinians forms the ultimate image, following years of unseeing....My personal feeling is that the wall should be the only proper set for any [political] play...until the real one is demolished.”

Yoel Marshak - the head of the Kibbutz Movement Task force - is organizing a massive stoppage of all trucks with goods/aid entering Gaza until Gilad Shalit is released. Furthermore he is also calling for Israel to prohibit all diplomats from entering the Gaza Strip until Shalit is released.
These actions are immoral and inhumane and will do NOTHING to get Gilad Shalit back to us - something that all Israelis yearn for.

I have been asked to provide an opinion on the issue of
justiciability and to answer the following question:
Is the issue alleged by the plaintiffs of violation of International
Humanitarian Law and Canadian Domestic Law justiciable before the Israeli Courts, and are those Courts willing to adjudicate on the question of the legality of settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in this case?
In my opinion, the answer is negative: the core question of the legality of the establishment of settlements is non-justiciable before Israeli Courts.

Far-left activist refuses to stand during playing of Hatikva, dean sends him letter of reprimand calling his behavior 'disgraceful'...
Rosenberg, a doctoral student in the Technion's Computer Sciences program, served in an IDF Intelligence unit but asked to be discharged for "conscientious" reasons.

The Government of Israel does not view the Arab-Bedouin citizens of Israel as deserving the right to utilize the Negev lands. The government will take extreme measures to prohibit this right. The reasoning: *Making the Negev Bloom – only with Jewish crops…* The indigenous Bedouin populations were the only people capable of utilizing the Desert land of the Negev, and were its sole inhabitants 100 years ago.
Today the gov’t of Israel is battling its Bedouin citizens in order to stop the access of the Bedouins to the last 3% of the Negev land that they are still holding. This the gov’t does by demolishing homes and destroying crops. The gov’t claims that there is land grabbing… indeed there is – but it is not done by the Bedouins, as the gov’t claims, rather by the Government of Israel itself.

We find the MAG’s position untenable as a matter of both fact and law: the analysis of the incident advanced in Part 3 generates the conclusion that the conduct qualifies as a war crime.When coupled with relevant data suggesting that the investigation and prosecution policies of the IDF leave much to be desired, the MAG’s decision becomes all the more problematic. Indeed, the handling of the Abu Rahma incident is not an exception; it is the rule. It attests to a highly deficient enforcement system put in place by the IDF with respect to illegal violence against Palestinians in the OPT and reflects a consistent policy of tolerance towards such violence. These deficiencies carry
two main legal implications: first, an inadequate legal response towards systematic violence against Palestinian civilians might indicate that said violence constitutes ‘state policy’ that renders the systematic attack against civilians a crime against humanity.

We have had another bit of success today in Wadi Rasha. There was no work today and it appears that the reason was the planned demonstration. In the end there were no guards or soldiers anywhere near the rout of the wall and we spent the time hearing about the confusing rout of the wall in that area

The refusal to recognise our existence has served the propaganda machine of Israel well, especially in times of war. The Israeli media works in unison with the government to present a unified voice of the Jewish population, supporting military action small and large. This seemingly unified voice is presented in opposition to the Palestinians in Israel who are naturally opposing the war and the occupation.
Any demonstration, articles or public statements against the war are discarded as representing Arabs and not Jews. The ‘only democracy in the Middle East’, as Israel portrays itself, does not allow dissent. If you are against its military offensive you are immediately branded a traitor. From this, the idea follows that all Palestinian citizens of Israel who oppose the war should be stripped of their citizenship. Such racism is what all of us, Jews and Arabs, have to suffer when we decide to publicly oppose the war.
Ready to be traitors
There are a growing number of people ready to be considered ‘traitors’. When Israel conquered the rest of Mandate Palestine in 1967 (most of it had already been taken in 1948 to create the state of Israel) there were only a handful of Jewish people who publicly opposed that occupation.

Although Israel had the right to use force in Gaza, it had no right to target civilians, believes Michael Sfrad, Israeli expert in international human rights and humanitarian law.
How many human right laws have been violated in the recent Palestinian-Israeli war? Michael Sfrad has spoken to RT’s Paula Slier about the sensitive issue.
RT: The Israeli army and most Israelis do not believe that they committed war crimes in Gaza. Why do you think they did?
MS: Most criminals do not think they commit crimes. For me there is no doubt that the Israeli defense forces have gravely violated international humanitarian law. They have violated the very fundamental principles of humanitarian law.

The article focuses on the decision of the Israeli Military Advocate
General (MAG) to charge an officer who ordered the shooting of a
handcuffed, blind-folded Palestinian demonstrator, and the soldier who executed the order, for ‘conduct unbecoming’. It advances the following propositions: (i) from the perspective of the applicable international law, the facts of the case qualify the shooting as a war crime; (ii) said decision of the Israeli MAG is indicative of a policy of tolerance towards violence against non-violent civilian protest against the construction of the Separation Wall; (iii) the implication of such policy is twofold:
first, it might transform ‘conduct unbecoming’ — which as a matter of law is a war crime — into a crime against humanity; second, it may well be construed as an invitation to the international community to intervene through the exercise of universal jurisdiction.

From spring 2003, Israeli anarchists began to organize autonomously to cooperate with Palestinians and internationals, particularly in the campaign against the construction of
the Segregation Barrier in the West Bank. Invited by farmers from the village of Mas'ha, the group built a protest and outreach camp on their land, about to be confiscated for the fence. The camp lasted four months and led to the founding of the group Anarchists Against the Wall. Anarchists remain active in the West Bank and inside Israel, and took part in the opposition to the second Lebanon War in August 2006 and the Gaza War in January 2009

The fears of annihilation, fed by well-fanned collective trauma, are close to the surface and easily manipulated by politicians and pundits. Dehumanization of the enemy helps explains the simple indifference to the shameless attacks on Palestinians in Gaza by all three major candidates currently competing in coming elections.
In the name of the Jews, the Israeli state drives Palestinians from their lands, imprisons them and punishes them with blundering brutality. The Revisionist policy dreamed up by early fascist Zionists of “Facts on the Ground” is a total success – Israel’s perceived choice today is between Apartheid and ethnic cleansing. The Israeli elections are seeing the meteoric rise of Avigdor Leiberman whose party, Israel Beitenu, promises to strip Palestinian citizens of Israel and Leftists of their citizenship if they fail tests of loyalty to the state. This isn’t swear-word fascism – this is the real thing. Still on the table is Kadima’s “realignment” plan to withdraw Israeli settlers from the “Palestinian” side of the segregation barrier. This is a de-facto annexation of 6 per-cent of West Bank territory which, crucially, would leave the in two landlocked islands, an internal enemy non-state which can now be disciplined on the same terms as Gaza.
The last six decades have seen the (at least) fifth ethnic cleansing event to take place on this soil. But so far it has been ethnic cleansing with somewhere to run. In Gaza it was verging on something different. The Gaza war was an intentional threat to commit ethnic cleansing with nowhere to run. The Israeli state was threatening to commit genocide and everybody knew it.

This is a former majority that overnight became a minority in its own land. In contrast to many minorities around the world, this is not a minority of immigrants but an indigenous minority, a minority of natives. Furthermore, the Palestinians in Israel are citizens of a country that is at conflict with their own people, the Palestinian people, and with their own nation, the Arab nation. The government and the Jewish majority in Israel refer to the Palestinian minority as if it was a hostile minority or a ‘fifth column’. A third attribute is that the Palestinians in Israel are citizens of a state that defines itself as the state of the Jews and not as the state of all its citizens.
A discriminatory policy of deprivation in almost all domains is thus enforced against them.
Nevertheless, since the Palestinian Al-Nakba (tragedy of 1948), they maintained their identity, culture, and national affiliation; they struggled and are still struggling to obtain a just, comprehensive and permanent peace in the Middle East through a fair and lasting resolution to the Palestinian refugee status according to UN resolutions, and for reaching peace through the declaration of an independent Palestinian state.

Since 1948, the Palestinian home is never the private domicile that shelters its dwellers from invaders and strangers. Israelis do not conceive of themselves as invaders or strangers, and the Palestinians are not regarded as home-owners in the simplest sense of the term. Their homes are vulnerable to nightly incursions, bulldozer activity, bombs dropped upon them from the skies, missile barrages or simply shootings that make them uninhabitable, expropriate them to create army outposts, positions and headquarters, all given to changing circumstances and the increasing 'security necessities'. The explanation given for these ritual actions is that they are crucial in order to 'flush out the terrorists from their nests', 'suppress resistance' or 'destroy insurgent infrastructure'. Thus the Palestinian home is presented as a military outpost of the enemy, calling for military intervention. The Palestinian home constitutes a problem, and military intervention its solution or at least a means to 'solving the problem'. More precisely, the home becomes penetrable and violable because it has been perceived by some local Israeli commander as a 'security problem' or its solution, but it tends to be regarded again and again as a problem because it is always seen as penetrable

At a demonstration last week in front of Kishon prison north-east of Haifa, where some of the Palestinian demonstrators are being held, Israeli anarchist and professor of mathematics Kobi Snitz tells IPS that this figure is indicative of the current social climate inside the state.
"People are made to be afraid. Virtually all Israelis, particularly Israeli Jews, are convinced that Hamas was the one that violated the ceasefire. This just isn't true...(But) you won't find this in the Israeli media. There is no understanding of the level of violence used on Gaza by the Israeli military. And the police operate under the assumption and guidelines that every political expression now is to be repressed and prevented."
IPS asked Snitz to describe the momentum of these daily protests across the country. "These demonstrations happened virtually by themselves," he says. "At this point, anybody who is not severely indoctrinated or ignorant just feels compelled to do something every day. It's unbearable to sit at home and not do anything."

The Israeli Education System
Historical developments have created a unique and complicated situation in the country. Hence, the most dramatic events, the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians during the 1948 War1 and the demolishing of more than 400 of their villages, have
given rise to hostile relationships between the two nations.

I think that occupation creates terrorism, and not vice versa. If all Israelis had the political consciousness to refuse to go to military service, we would have already arrived in a revolutionary situation. It would mean that they had all shed their artificial, drummed-up fears and risen up against their exploiters. In general, though, when people discuss politics, they put themselves in the place of the politician and imagine what they would do. But people like you and me aren't being asked what we think the state should do. Whatever agreement the political elites end up signing is not going to be the end of the conflict. It's only the beginning of the peace process. What matters at this stage is building ties of binational solidarity and cooperation, to have grassroots movements that seek to show and demonstrate with their own acts and lives that another Middle East is possible. You don't have to be an anarchist to agree that it's through everyday relationships that peace is accomplished. So when my friends and I go to villages of Palestinians whose lands are being confiscated for construction of the segregation barrier, we are showing with our own bodies that something is stronger than the perpetual threat being projected by parties on all sides of the political spectrum. We are showing that we have values that transcend all forms of separation.

Taking issue with the simplistic condemnation of any kind of Palestinian opposition to Israeli oppression as nationalist state-building, Gordon dives into the sticky subject with his typical finesse, dismissing the “pox on both your houses” stance of many anarchists outside the region by focusing on the actions of individual Israeli anarchists and the groups they’re in, along with their strategy of joint struggle unmediated by official or institutional channels.
The everyday acts of resistance that anarchists join and defend in Palestine – e.g. removing roadblocks or defending olive harvesters from attacks by Jewish settlers – are immediate steps to help preserve people’s livelihoods and dignity, not a step toward statehood… Israelis taking direct action alongside Palestinians is a strong public message in itself… Israelis who demonstrate hand-in-hand with Palestinians are threatening because they are afraid neither of Arabs or the Second Holocaust that they are supposedly destined to perpetrate… And this is threatening on a deeper level than any hole in the [separation] fence – but then again, anarchists didn’t get their reputation as trouble-makers for nothing.

Understating the true nature of RHR could be achieved by
concentrating on its executive director Rabbi Arik Ascherman. In March of this year he was arrested by the Israeli authorities for ''inciting Palestinians to oppose the police'' in East Jerusalem. It was when the Israeli police confronted the rioting residents of the Silwan village over excavation work that began there. Ascherman supported the Palestinian claim that the digging can endanger their houses and the police requested him to stay away from Silwan for 15 years. When he refused to oblige, they detained him and brought him before a judge.
The Rabbi made the most of his arrest and his organization in North America hailed his action to stop what they coined ''the Judaization'' of Silwan. The Communist Party of Canada Also expressed concern. His allies at the notorious ISM were alerted, as well as his friends and colleagues at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Attorney General Menachem Mazuz recently ordered the police to open a criminal investigation against the New Profile organization - the first time a criminal probe has ever been launched against a group that encourages draft dodging.

Well, Hamas is a difficult question, because we’ve probably gone too far in undermining Palestinian society in the territories. Israel created Hamas. We created Hamas because of this idea that if we get the Palestinians to fight each other, we win. If they destroy each other, we win. This strategy has failed completely. It failed in Lebanon, and we’ve paid a high cost for this. Same with the Palestinians. I think Israel should simply leave them alone. We should leave them alone, pay them compensation for what we owe them for so many years of occupation, and let them go on with their lives.

Over the past few months, a working group has been meeting and
discussing how to build the BDS campaign by citizens of Israel. The group itself is composed of a small group of Israeli citizens who object to the daily apartheid policies towards Palestinians
everywhere, many of whom are already active in challenging Israeli oppression in different political, intellectual and cultural arenas.
Much of the group's work so far has focused on discussing amongst itself, and with the Palestinian initiators of the campaign, on the ways in which this campaign can be built within Israeli society. This article describes some of the results of these discussions.

The village of Nilin has withstood all the violence the army has used against it so far. That included the murders of 17 years old Youssef Amireh a 10 years old Ahmed Mousa, a siege and a curfew. It mounts mass actions which manage to halt the construction of the wall time and time again. However, two weeks ago after the two murders the village was faced with the cruelest choice. Every participant in the demonstrations had to struggle with this dilemma and the decision to continue the demonstrations is one which is being made collectively as each demonstration sets out.
Asked about the mood on the popular committee, A. H. one of its members says that “After the killings I did not know how the people will react, but they were only more determined to fight on. We feel strong and united, we can continue”

Israel, Palestine, and the US Congress: Realities and Opportunities, Part 1
CNI's Public Forum at the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC. Part 1 features James Abourezk, former US Senator, and Dr. Menachem Klein, Professor of Political Science at Bar-Ilan University, Israel

There is another motive which one would expect to resonate with Jews everywhere. It was highlighted by Amos Goldberg, our tour guide at Yad Va’shem, Jerusalem’s remarkable Holocaust memorial.
A middle-aged Holocaust historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and member of Children of Abraham, which fosters ties between Jewish and Muslim youth, Goldberg was arrested a month ago while confronting Israeli security forces in the conflict-torn West Bank city of Hebron.
His focus is less on the perpetrators and victims of the European genocide than on the millions of ordinary, decent people, many of them not anti-Semitic, who watched from the sidelines.
“We blame the Poles for not helping the Jews,” he says. “I don’t want to be a bystander.”

Ariella Azoulay, lecturer and theorist, cut to the heart of the barriers that are preventing the right of return from being discussed inside the Israeli political body.
She explained that:
"We are talking about a colonialist- Zionist narrative in a power context ... The original people of this country were never considered by the colonizers. And now, the regime wages war against those who remain [after 1948] -- and calls their struggle against occupation and military violence 'terrorism.' [The state] does everything possible to deter organization within the indigenous population, including attempts to erase the memory of the Nakba."
Azoulay added that "there is a threat to Israel by its citizens who demand responsibility of the regime -- those who stand beside the people who have suffered under this regime ... Israel is an illegitimate regime created to control people, the original inhabitants, with participation of its citizens -- making [Israeli Jewish society] agents of the regime. The state has managed to create an identification within the political scope that merges citizenship with crimes of the state on a daily basis. It is therefore essential to negate and oppose this regime on a fundamental basis as long as Israel refuses to recognize Palestinian refugees' rights."

Historian Mustafa Kabha pointed that the Israeli army chose to attack on the village of Al-Tantur - with a population of 1500 people - being the weaker side in the southern region of Haifa, because of its location on the Mediterranean coast and being easy occupation unlike other neighboring villages on the heights of Mount Carmal.
Referring to the Israeli army targeted the village on the night of 22 May shelling from the sea before the raids in the east in the same night.
He noted that the occupation army chose Al-Tantur not very easy to attack, but it was up to the Port of arms to the Palestinians. He said: "The massacre left in the Al-Tantur great impact on the Palestinians in the neighboring villages and paved the displacements."

Several of us had had a chance to talk to other activists at the Haifa one state conference and in particular to meet with some of the Palestinian organizers of the BDS compaign. The meetings were very successful and the feeling was that we are finally have a clearer idea of what an Israeli group could do and some ideas about how to start it. Also, it seems that the first step is to do some internal education of ourselves and potential BDS supporters. In short, there are concrete things to talk about and planning to do. Please come to the meeting

It has been almost two years since the last FFIPP conference in Ramallah. Since then, the situation in the Occupied Territories has deteriorated with the rapidly worsening conditions in Gaza, the continued construction of the Wall and the settlements, continued violence— mainly against the Palestinians- and the lack of any progress in the ‘negotiations’. The tensions between Hamas and Fatah continued as well and the isolation of Hamas contributed to the general deterioration. The Annapolis conference has failed to produce any positive change in the region and the occupation of Iraq is now threatening to escalate into, potentially, a major confrontation with Iran.
This turbulent political environment in Israel, Palestine and the region, coupled with the devastating socio-economic conditions in Gaza, urgently call for better understanding, cooperation and positive plan of joint action among Internationals, Palestinians and Israelis. This conference has been designed as an aid for such an action.

Right of Return is the moral and political basis for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
Recognition of the Right of Return is, therefore, the basis for this conference. The goal of this conference
is promoting public debate around questions concerning the return of Palestinian refugees, to open a
wide array of ideas and proposals about different possibilities of return. Central questions this conference
raises are how can the return occur in practice, and what shapes of shared life will be possible to develop
with the return of Palestinian refugees.

The weekly demonstration against the wall in Um Salamuna was also in solidarity with Mousa Abu Maria. Mousa was a key organizer for such demos and attended them regularly. The demonstrators who included Palestinians, Internationals and Israelis wore signs on their chests reading "I am Mousa Abu Maria" in several languages. When the demonstrators refused to be ordered around by occupying soldiers on Palestinian land the army considered that a 'provocation'. Ten demonstrators were arrested for this crime and stuffed into an army truck. As the truck drove the demonstrators away they passed a diplomatic delegation stopped by the side of the road. It later turned out that it was French Foreign minister Kouchner who was probably on his way from Bethlehem to Hebron (seen in the AP picture while in Bethlehem). It would be interesting to know if Kouchner had an idea of the struggle waged by the people of the villages he passed by.

The tour was led by Eitan Bronstein of the Zochrot
Association. Eitan described the villages and he discussed
Israel‘s decision not only to destroy them but to do what could
be done to erase all memory of them. A park was planted in place of the villages and signs were placed describing ancient sites that are found there. No mention is made on any of the signs about the recent existence of Palestinian villages or about their destruction. Eitan described the work of Zochrot in raising awareness of destroyed Palestinian villages by marking them with signs and conducting educational work. The participants commented on their previous ignorance of the destruction of villages and on how their schools succeeded in teaching history without addressing the Palestinian side of the story. Several of the participants discussed how this should be changed in the educational system.

Dear all,
A first meeting was held in April in Haifa to discuss forming a BDS (boycott divestment sanctions) support group. Below is a short summary of that meeting. The agenda for the follow up meeting is still pretty open but there are already two things on it. The first is a forum at a right of return and one state conference in June and the second is organizing a special public forum just to discuss BDS. As I said the agenda is still pretty open, please come with ideas.

The works in the exhibit "Amnesia" try to deal with the question of possibility for objects to awake the memory of the Nakba considering the amnesia that is afflicting Israeli society. A group of Jewish artists examine, using material culture, the possibility of creating dialogue with Palestinian refugees and their tragedy

Following the army's 11th unsuccessful attempt to evict the settlers from the privately-owned Palestinian land, prominent activist Kobi Snitz and his comrades tried to occupy the area themselves, at the behest of the widow whose property is being squatted on.

Trouble has not stopped at the outpost. Soldiers at the gate are
refusing entry to some of the Palestinians and threatening them.
Israeli presence is requested to document and deter further abuse by soldiers.
please call me if you can make it.

Friday, February 22nd 2008: Al-Khader Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements with Al-Khader community invite you to join us in the weekly demonstration that will take place at the southern side of the village near the bypass, route 60.
The motto of this demo is:
Keep pursuing non-violent resistance to end the Israeli occupation

Nizar Hassan, a renowned Palestinian filmmaker, and a fierce critic of Israel's brutal occupation, has been working at the Sapir College, Israel for a number of years. This is a school I have set up, so I know it rather well - it is the only school where such views were allowed to be heard, and a Palestinian filmmaker was employed in key position within Israel. Nizar has been crucial, both in his films and hius teaching, establishing a deeper knowledge and understanding of Israel within Palestine, and vice versa. This he has done with sensitivity and a great sense of duty, and as such is a voice of sanity in the desert of the unreal, to paraphrase Zizek...
Almost a year ago, shortly after the murderous incursion of Israel into Lebanon and Gaza in Summer 2006, Nizar has encountered a student of his in class, uniformed and armed. As he has asked students to avoid coming to his classes in such fashion, he has asked the student to not come like this for the next class. The student was unhappy about this request, and argued with Nizar. Nizar then said (in Hebrew) 'Yes, Commander', which translated into English sounds bad, and is the equivalint of Yes Sir, in the military context. The student has then decided to complain, and also spoke to the media.
A campaign of lies, propaganda and hate was then unleashed in Israel against Nizar

Nizar Hassan, a lecturer at Sapir College who refused to teach a reservist who showed up to his class in an IDF uniform, was asked by the college's administration to apologize to the student in order to avoid the termination of employment at the institution, according to a summary of the council hearing on the case on Thursday.

Dr. Talila Kosh Zohar is from the Kibbutzim College of Education. New Profile is a group of Israelis, concerned that they seem to be living in a soldiers' state. Many Israelis believe that their country is faced by threats beyond its control; New Profile now questions the true meaning of "national security" and are disturbed by the treatment of the Palestinian citizens.
New Profile opposes the use of the army, police and security forces in the ongoing occupation, and the treatment of the Palestinian citizens of Israel - demolishing their homes, denying them building and development rights, using violence to disperse their peaceful demonstrations.
Thousands of young Israelis who share their views are currently avoiding conscription or combat duty - New Profile offers them support.

Bethlehem – Palestine – Friday January 18, 2008 - The Popular Committee against the Wall and the Settlement in Al-Khader is organizing a nonviolent demonstration to protest the construction of the annexation wall in the town of Al-Khader south of Bethlehem.

This article considers two exhibitions organized by Israeli writer Ariella Azoulay1, "Everything Could Be seen," held at the Umm el-Fahem Art Gallery in 2004 and "Act of State: 1967-2007 [An historical exhibition]," held at the Minshar Art Gallery in Tel Aviv in June 2007. Both exhibitions raised questions about the relationship between photography, spectatorship, and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The latter exhibition also explored the value of photography as a means of
understanding the historical processes and structures of the occupation. Azoulay's curatorial projects provide new understandings of how
photography can contribute to the development of a broader opposition to the occupation within Israeli society. Central to such concerns is the visibility of the occupation for Israelis.

Most Israelis still find it hard to acknowledge that they bear historical responsibility for the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem. The Zionist vision is based, among other things, on the assumption that its fulfillment need not cause injustice to anyone: If only the Arabs would relinquish their nationalist yearnings and agree to the fulfillment of our dream, it would be good for everyone, including them.
This historical fiction is very harmful because as long as we convince ourselves that we have no part in the responsibility for the creation of the Palestinian tragedy, we have no real reason to try to correct the injustice. This is the importance of acknowledging our responsibility. When the day comes to publish the historic declaration of reconciliation, it will be possible to remember Peres' Kafr Qasem apology and the main lesson that emerges from it: It does not hurt to ask forgiveness.

Anarchists Against The Wall (AATW) is a pro-violence Israeli group that supports the popular Palestinian struggle. The proximity of the struggle on the ground to Israeli cities presents an opportunity for intense involvement by many Israelis. At the same time, the physical risk in such activity is quite high. It goes without saying that the risks for our Palestinian partners are much higher. As a small group with an aversion to... Kobi Snitz is a member of Anarchists against the Wall. His political involvement started when he joined CUPE local 3902 as a teaching assistant in Toronto. He continued being active as a graduate student in the United States, working on teaching assistant union drives, and to oppose U.S. aggression. His work with AATW started when he returned to his native Israel in 2003.

Several weeks ago, Rateb Abu Rahma and Kobi Snitz, members of the group "Faculty for Israeli - Palestinian Peace," visited the University of Massachusetts and the surrounding area. Their talk was titled "Bil'in, Village of Resistance," and referred to a town where non-violent resistance led to an Israeli court ruling to redirect a portion of the wall that goes through the area. The event was poorly attended at UMass but nevertheless proved to be very informative and was greatly appreciated. It was a privilege to have people who have experienced Israeli crimes firsthand come speak for the sake of spreading knowledge and nurturing concern for innocent people on both sides of the conflict. The speakers' message was clear: the separation that Israel has built along the West Bank is a hindrance to people's lives in the region and must be torn down if peace is desired.

'It should not be overlooked that Hassan used one of the few platforms available to him as an Arab-Israeli intellectual. He did so as a director who is training young directors, and as usual he challenged them with his harsh statement. But Hassan did not perceive that he violated the trust placed in him as someone who is supposed to fight for the freedom of ideas and a high standard of ethics.'

To complain: The President of Sapir College is Prof. Zev Tzahor, whose fax is 972-8-6899412-His email is sonia@sapir.ac.il

Nizar Hassan, the filmmaker who instructed a student at Sapir College in Sderot not to come to class wearing his army uniform and carrying a gun, "is a talented and courageous artist whose only sin was his attempt to maintain universal civic values" and whose action "pointed to the serious phenomenon of the great involvement of the army in campus life."
These statements are in a petition of support for Hassan signed by dozens of Jewish and Arab university teachers. Hassan was suspended by the college until the disciplinary committee reaches a decision in his case. After a hearing last Thursday, the committee could recommend a punishment ranging from an official reprimand to dismissal.

Many of us in our college-aged youth had grandiose notions of how to run the world without the real applicable knowledge or experience in how to do so. As we grew up, we began to see the world no longer as becoming some utopian abstraction, but a dangerous place where our actions as youthful “ revolutionaries” could harm others. Unfortunately, Kobi Snitz, a PhD in mathematics with affiliations at Bar-Ilan University and Ben Gurion University, is an example of the college radical that never grew into full adulthood, even after he began pursuing a postgraduate degree. Of the plethora of Israeli academics within Israel’s college system that seem to work tirelessly to advance the aims of the totalitarian enemies of the Jewish nation, Snitz is working overtime.

Zochrot is an NGO whose goal is to introduce the Palestinian Nakba to the Israeli-Jewish public, to express the Nakba in Hebrew, to enable a place for the Nakba in the language and in the environment. This is in order to promote an alternative memory to the hegemonic Zionist memory. The Nakba is the disaster of the Palestinian people: the destruction of the villages and cities, the killing, the expulsion, the erasure of Palestinian culture. But the Nakba, I believe, is also our story, the story of the Jews who live in Israel, who enjoy the privileges of being the ‘winners.’

Architect Eyal Weizman discusses his new book, [1] Hollow Land - an exploration of the political space created by Israel’s occupation as a laboratory of advanced capitalist colonialism in which the actions of the Israeli military, humanitarian workers, settlers, and different groups of the colonised themselves are intertwined, forming intense relationships.

By ceaseless demonstrations, direct actions and endless creativity the village and its supporters have forced the Israeli court to yield back part of the lands of the village in a stunning decision on Sept 4th. The struggle is not over but one thing is already clear; the joint popular movement of Palestinians internationals and Israelis is capable of sustaining intensive campaigns for years and has more power than even it knew.
Members of Anarchists against the wall will be in London on the 29th and 30th of September. The following two events are a chance to hear about their part of the struggle and support their legal fund.

The one Israeli I was really looking forward to meet was Udi Adiv. I saw him as an Israeli who dared to challenge the zionist apartheid regime of Israel by actually volunteering to fight shoulder to shoulder with the Arab people of Palestine, the main victims of that regime.He was arrested by the zionist Gestapo upon his return from Syria in 1974. He was
convicted and sentenced to 18 years imprisonment, but released after 12 years on condition that he will not be involved in politics for the rest of the term. A committed Marxist-Leninist he had believed in a socialist revolution in the Middle East. Now, upon meeting him for the first time, we exchanged views and became friends. He helped me to get in touch with Lea Tzemel, the Israeli lawyer in Jeusalem whose legal practice was based on the defence of Palestinian prisoners.

The obligation of citizens to resist criminal acts and policies carried out by their government is recognized in international law and it requires Israelis to do all they can to resist their government. More importantly, the moral obligation of resisting the wall becomes apparent to anyone who has ever witnessed it cutting off villages and towns. To look away and ignore the crimes committed in our names, with our taxes, by the students we train or those we keep polite company with is to lose some of one's humanity. ...

while it is the Palestinians who are deprived of the right to self-determination, it is all Arab territories that are occupied illegally. These distinctions appear to sever the illegality
of the occupation from the right to self-determination.

When ‘Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine (APJP)’ sent aletter to the new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown a few days ago describing as “disturbing” his decision to become a patron of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), this was another example of the active campaigning of this international pressure group. The letter says: “Your becoming a patron of JNF-UK can be seen as a tacit acceptance of an unacceptable status quo, and also places you in the position of not being an unbiased mediator in the peace process”.
Among those signing the letter were ...Eyal Weizman, director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College, London University. He is author of the important new book “Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Oppression.”

“It’s very different from other kinds of colonial geography – for
instance, the ‘bantustans’ in apartheid South Africa were special
designated zones, but with Israel and Palestine you get overlapping claims over the same sites woven together into mutually exclusive separate networks that try to never cross.”
This pattern of settlements and camps arranged in space, connected by bridges and tunnels, has a long history. “This is something you get from the very first attempt to divide Israel and Palestine,” Eyal notes.
“If you look at plans from the 1920s and 1930s prepared for the League of Nations during the mandate period by diplomats and mapmakers, you’ll see that nobody could find a line that separates Israel from Palestine – it was always a matter of building bridges or tunnels over or under the other’s territory to maintain continuity...."

There are around a million Israeli citizens these days, mostly Ashkenazim, who brandish an EU passport. But we, Mizrahim, have nowhere to go. We were brought here as their 'natural laborers,' and from the early 1950s on, were stuffed by the master into the spacious Nakba villages, but in crowded conditions, to eliminate any possibility for the Palestinians to enact their right of return.

Every one of the hundreds of kilometers of the wall is hated and despised by the people on whose land it is built and who are imprisoned by it. Today, on the lands of the village of Surif Palestinians internationals and Israelis demonstrated what this resentment means: At any moment any part of the hated wall might be dismantled when an opportunity arises.
In an Isolated point along the path of the wall, south of Bethlehem such an opportunity presented itself today. A small number of people were able to cut through the wall in two minutes and disappear before the army knew what has happened. When soldiers did arrive, the only thing left for them to do was to explain to their superiors how their patrols can not possibly prevent this from happening again.

Dr Udi Adiv, who spied for Syria and was sentenced to 12 years in prison, recently told (June 30) a conference of Israeli Arabs that “Israelis are starting to accept the right of return”. Adiv believes there has been a big change in the Israeli public’s attitude “on the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes inside the Green Line”.

We have serious concerns about the unusual inclusion of the instructor's biography in the course syllabus, which stresses not her academic credentials but rather her credentials
as an anti-Israel activist: "During the last several years she has been active with the nonviolent joint Palestinian Israeli campaign against the Apartheid Wall being built in Palestine". There are three serious problems with the instructor's statement: First, her use of the term "Apartheid Wall" is a clear indication that she believes Israel to be a racist state. Second, her use of the term "Palestine" gives life and legitimacy to a Palestinian
state that does not exist. Both of these examples not only indicate the instructor's extreme political bias, which could set the stage for indoctrination rather than education in her classroom, they are also inaccurate and misleading, suggesting that the instructor's
bias could substitute for accuracy, truth and scholarship, and even impede the dissemination of knowledge. Moreover, a student who does not agree with the instructor's political bias, and may even find it offensive, is not likely to sign up for this
course.

A Global Perspective on the Israeli Occupation
Yehouda Shenhav, Tel Aviv University. Leo Corry, Head, The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University. Adi Ophir, Tel Aviv University and The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute in a A Symposium Marking 40 Years of Israeli Occupation in the Palestinian Territories

Three Israelis (Kobi, Yoav and Becca) and 2 internationals were arrested today at the action in Daharia...
They are all spending the night. The Israelis are accused of illegal assembly, interference of a police officer in duty and property damage. They will be brought to court in Jerusalem tomorrow at around noon

A protestor by the name of Kobi added: "We marched towards the fence and sat on the ground. Police and soldiers immediately began to shoot brutally with stun grenades and rubber bullets."
He explained that crowd dispersal was undertaken by a unit of soldiers who had not been present at previous protests (which have taken place in the village every Friday for the past two years) and described the troops as unusually violent.

Toaff's shenanigans illustrate perfectly why Israeli universities
are sinking into a quagmire of mediocrity and how the
unwillingness to act against charlatans and fraud is destroying Israeli academia.

Yet for Israelis too, the non-violent approach is odd and foreign, unpopular, and seen with contempt by a culture that has become used to violence and aggression from its very inception.
...The negative and satanic image of the enemy flourished as a result of the occupation on one side, and terrorism on the other side. Non-violence threatens and endangers this outline, which has been created and reinforced through hard work for many years. How many Israelis, for example, are familiar with the Palestinian organization for non-violence and democracy, which engages in widespread activity at schools and public institutions? Not many, as such familiarity may crack the collective violent image of Palestinian culture.
There is no doubt that similar examples exist on the other side as well – and again, we are trapped in the grim symmetry of the conflict.

The Israeli Defence Forces have been heavily influenced by contemporary philosophy, highlighting the fact that there is considerable overlap among theoretical texts deemed essential by military academies and architectural schools

A small group banded together last October to form the Israeli Committee for the Right of Residency, which is attempting to persuade Israel’s academics to take a stand against the
restrictions. Jacob Katriel, an emeritus physics professor at Technion, the Israeli Institute of Technology in Haifa, says the call was well received when he presented it last month during
a session on human rights at the Statistical Mechanics Conference at Rutgers University, New Jersey.

Efrat Ben-Ze'ev is an Israeli Jew and a member of Ta'ayush. For the last three years she has taken a particular interest in the effects of the enforcement of residency permits and other restrictions on the Palestinian villagers of Nu'aman, which amount to a siege on their homes by the Israeli Defence Force. She had invited Ecumenical Accompaniers from the Jerusalem Team to learn more about the deteriorating situation. I was intrigued to know what journey had brought a Jewish woman to spend her time helping Palestinian people.

The "historian" Soreq devoted his Haaretz column to proving that the Maccabees were fascist and racist hooligans, bloodthirsty zealots, and downright Likudniks. His column was entitled "Bloodthirsty Zealots". His thesis was that Jews should stop celebrating Hannuka and the exploits of the Maccabees, and should instead feel sympathy for the poor occupied and mistreated Greeks and Hellenists.

Another game of international power-play between the "Muslim fundamentalists" and the "American fundamentalists" and we, both Israel and Lebanon, are just small players in it, paying the price of death and destruction for others.

Goldreich is an open supporter of Israel's Stalinist communist party HADASH. He endorses it here on his personal web page. He opines at length about how awful capitalism is and how wonderful communism is. He endorses the Arab version of history

I have no doubt that many of those who justify and argue away Israeli barbarities as "strategic moves" are quietly ashamed of themselves, but hold the party line as is expected of them. In so doing, they betray Jewish tradition and values, Jewish liberalism, and a long history of suffering from racism and anti-Semitism. They also make such terrifying historical echoes more likely to return in the future, when they are part of removing the limits and boundaries, of justifying the unjustifiable. Justice, we learnt from Hillel the Elder, is not divisible -- either we all have it, or none shall have it. They, and the rest of us, may rue the day they were too frightened to remember their own history, and act to keep the boundaries intact between humanity and barbarism.

As a Jewish historian, Horowitz felt that he could no longer hold his peace and not speak up about the connection between the legacy of Jewish violence and the current actions of "Jews in the Holy Land [who] are still avenging the 'old and new quarrel' against those they consider to be 'Amalekites,' [while] their malice is hardly as impotent as it was in the distant days of Theodosius II."
Horowitz quotes rabbis and settler leaders who equate the Palestinians with Amalek. He describes the Purim processions in Hebron that are becoming more violent from year to year, ever since a group of Jews moved into the Beit Hadassah neighborhood to "renew" Jewish settlement in the city in 1981 - and chose to do so, significantly, on Purim.
Toward the end of his sweeping study, Horowitz returns to his breaking point - the massacre at the Tomb of the Patriarchs - and concludes with sadness: "The continued celebration of Purim in the streets of central Jerusalem after the news broke of the bloody massacre in Hebron [is] one particular instance in which I would agree with [Samuel Hugo] Bergman's prophetic assertion that the holiday's continued observance is best understood as a consequence of the 'deep decay of our people.'"

Subtopia would like to extend a big congratulations to architect and educator Eyal Weizman who was recently selected as the winner of the 2006–07 James Stirling Memorial Lectures on the City Competition for his proposal: Destruction by Design: Military Strategy as Urban Planning. Weizman, to say the least, has spent years pioneering research on the ‘military urbanism’ of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has not always been supported, sadly to say. But his work has forced a new critique of what occupation means in an architectural and urban sense, where space is inherently political and "the frontier" of occupied territory is constructed as much by military generals as it is by planners and intellectuals. The result is a new hyper-dimensional form of spatial warfare designed to negate the progress of a Palestinian State from virtually every angle; an urban space remade strictly for the purposes of exerting military control over a neighboring population.

'Israeli apartheid is akin to South African apartheid
At the height of South African apartheid, 87% of the land was reserved in law for the settlement, cultivation and development by "Whites" only, whereas in Israel to date, 93% of the land is reserved in law for settlement, cultivation and development by "Jews" only.'.

The South African and Israeli situations are similar because Mizrahim and Palestinians (like blacks in South Africa) experience discrimination in all spheres of life, academe included. Unless they conform, Israel’s academe is blocked for Mizrahim and Palestinians in the first place.

"Movement Against Israeli Apartheid in Palestine:
In order to appreciate the full negative impact and destructive implications of the Apartheid Wall currently constructed by the Israeli occupation authorities and designated to extend the full length of the West Bank (some 350 km) it is necessary to consider the Apartheid Wall in its historical context. First, in the context of the history of the mainstream ideology informing past and current Israeli policies, namely, political Zionism, an ideology predicated upon the distinction between “Jew and “non-Jew,” and committed to a settler-colonial political program. Second, in the context of the legal underpinnings of the “two-state solution,” notably in the context of such UN General Assembly and Security Council, resolutions as are relevant to the question of Palestine..."

The following 530 people have publicly agreed to support a statement that reads: "We Israeli Jews and Jews from Other Countries Support the Rights of Palestinian Refugees." It is understood by the signers that this includes the Right to Return.

"...I intend to match the highest contribution, up to US$1000, by an equal contribution of mine. I realize that most people cannot afford such a contribution, and there may be many who cannot afford any contribution at all. To those people I would like to say that their moral support is extremely valuable, and that they should not in any way feel inconvenient or intimidated..."

This normalization of apartheid not only shreds the basic human rights of Palestinians by confining them to ghettos and sweatshops, it also perpetuates the ecological devastation of the land. True sustainability can be based only upon the July 9, 2004, decision by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) requiring Israel to tear down the wall. The decision mandates the international community "not to recognize the illegal situation created by the construction of the wall, and not to render any aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by it."

This campaign coincides with the resumption of Mr. Fahima's trial in the Tel Aviv district court, on July 17, on most ridiculous charges. Her real crime has been trying to reach out compassionately, seeking understanding and peace, to Palestinians in the occupied city of Jenin.

The issue of boycott (academic, cultural, economic) of Israel has not been removed from the international agenda with the latest AUT resolution, it has only been postponed until the next round. The ongoing and relentless Israeli onslaught on the occupied territories will inevitably, again and again, arouse international grassroot reaction and pressure on Israel.

The international legal discourse on belligerent occupation has traditionally regarded the phenomenon of occupation as a fact of international life which, once established, generates normative consequences: the application of the law of occupation. Accordingly, its focus has been on the manner with which an occupying power complies, or fails to comply with specific obligations under this law. Virtually no discussion exists as to the legality of the phenomenon itself. This article proposes to expand this discourse by inquiring into the nature of the normative regime of occupation, as distinct from the legality of specific actions undertaken within it. Such an inquiry, rather than regarding the phenomenon of occupation as merely a fact of power, identifies a norm which governs the phenomenon, thereby making it possible to differentiate between legal and illegal occupations. This identification involves a legal construction relating to both the normative order which is generated by an occupation and to the normative order which generates the legal regime of occupation. Focusing on the continued Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory conquered in 1967, the article argues that this occupation has become illegal both intrinsically (that is, in terms of the normative regime of occupation) and extrinsically (that is, in terms of the international legal order which generates the normative regime of occupation as an exception to the normal order of sovereign equality between states: the situation is exceptional due to the severance of the link between sovereignty and effective control). Section I advances this proposition.

The intrinsic legality of an occupation is to be measured in relation to three interrelated fundamental legal principles: (a) Sovereignty and title in an occupied territory is not vested in the occupying power; under contemporary international law, and in view of the principle of self-determination, said sovereignty is vested in the population under occupation; (b) The occupying power is entrusted with the management of public order and civil life in the territory under control. In view of the principle of self-determination, the people under occupation are the beneficiaries of this trust. The dispossession and subjugation of these people is thus a violation of this trust, and (c) The occupation is temporary, as distinct from indefinite. The violation of each of these principles, as distinct from the violation of a specific norm which reflects an aspect of these principles, renders an occupation illegal. Further, these principles are interrelated: the substantive constraints on the managerial discretion of the occupant elucidated in principle (a) and (b) respectively, generate the conclusion that it must necessarily be temporary, and the violation of the temporal constraints expressed in principle (c) cannot but violate principles (a) and (b), thereby corrupting the normative regime of occupation. This occupation is illegal. This is the nature of the Israeli occupation. The extrinsic legality of an occupation is to be measured by its exceptionality. Once the boundaries between the exception and the rule are blurred, the occupation becomes illegal. The Israeli occupation has thus blurred these boundaries. Section II substantiates this argument.
Concluding Section III focuses on the indeterminacies of this occupation as reflecting both its essential feature and its legitimizing mechanism, and proceeds to consider the normative consequences of an illegal occupation.

In exchange for Iran's agreement to relinquish its rights to enrich uranium for reprocessing the spent fuel rods in its reactor the Europeans have undertaken to replace the spent fuel. But the US administration, as mentioned earlier, is not interested in agreements and has decided that" there is no diplomatic solution", and that Iran must be prevented from "going nuclear".

"Dr. Menahem Klein is a scoundrel under the guise of religious piety. He dons a black skullcap. He is a clean-shaven orthodox Jew. He is the darling of the extreme Left in the media and one of the top figures behind the Geneva agreement. This week he traveled all the way to Europe in order to declare that the establishment of the State of Israel was a catastrophe. "

A similar initiative, entitled "End the Israeli occupation: Divest Now," was launched at Princeton University, New Jersey in March. The campaign homepage quotes both Archbishop Desmond Tutu comparing current events in the territories to South Africa under the apartheid regime and Professor Jacob Katriel of the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology describing the petition as "in no way" anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic. "As such," the quote continues, "it allows people such as myself, who see a just and democratic Israel ... as a desirable objective in which they have personal stakes, to share your concern."

"Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ... together with the establishment that serves him, is abetting terrorism against Israel ... What is terrorism if not a deliberate attack on a noncombatant population in order to achieve a political goal? And what, by the same token, is a rage-directed reaction - blind or calculated, but in either case systematic and repeated, against a civilian population - if not terrorism."